Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When the announcement of the reallocation of resource teacher hours was made the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party had a meeting of its education committee on Thursday morning and another meeting since the start of this week with the Minister for Education and Skills and officials from his office. I found it very productive. As the previous speaker said, many calls about this issue were made to Deputies' offices, especially the offices of Government Deputies. I welcome the establishment of a review, to which the Minister gave a commitment in the Dáil last night, under the chairmanship of Eamon Stack because, for the first time in a 20 year period, it will provide an opportunity to examine the delivery of resources for children with special educational needs, particularly at primary and secondary level.

It may well transpire that the current model is the best one but, having been a teacher and having spoken to teachers about this in the past few days, I have doubts the current model is anything but perfect. I spoke to a teacher today and she asked me if I was speaking on this motion tonight to make one point in the Dáil on this issue, namely, that the hours and resources that are being allocated in terms of special educational needs are not the property of schools, the Department, boards of management or anybody other than the children for whom they are allocated. There has been a temptation to forget that having regard to the way this issue has been discussed in the past few years.

I welcome also the commitment to establish a panel for the redeployment of special needs assistants. This is long overdue. The previous Government missed an opportunity to do something about this. There is an opportunity also to provide pathways for progression, training and upskilling for special needs assistants in schools and they would welcome that opportunity. Apart from providing certainty in terms of employment, and many previous speakers referred to these jobs, this provision will give them an opportunity ultimately to provide the best level of assistance that they can for children with special educational needs, which is the core of what we are discussing.

The current system of allocating hours, the general allocation model, is not perfect. Every speaker last night and tonight has said that. I have an issue regarding the allocation of hours and I have tabled a question on this to the Minister for Education and Skills which I hope will be answered next week.

Regarding the assessment of children through the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, parents who can afford to get private psychological assessments carried out for the children are at an advantage in terms of the allocation of those hours. The parents of children from more socially deprived and disadvantaged areas do not have such access to cash and as a result their children have to wait until they are called for an assessment with NEPS. When special educational needs organisers allocate hours, he or she allocates them based on the assessments that are handed in. It will be interesting to see what results I get from back from the Department of Education and Skills next week. Anecdotally teachers have told me that the children of parents who have the financial wherewithal to have the assessments carried out have an advantage, and that is something that badly needs to be addressed. I have said previously and I say it again now that unless we have a level playing field where the €1.3 billion that is being allocated, which is €200 million more than the entire budget of the Higher Education Authority, is provided for those children with the greatest need, regardless of their socio-economic background or of their parents' ability to be able to have private psychological assessments carried out, we have a problem.

Another issue I raised directly with the Minister this morning and I raise it again now is that any change in the allocation of a model needs to be issued by way of a pilot scheme. It is a waste of time unless we can get parental, teacher, management and, most importantly, child buy-in into this. A young male teacher, with qualified with me in Mary Immaculate College, who was aware I intended to speak on this motion telephoned me to ask that I put on the record of the Dáil that while it is not appropriate for a teacher to drive a child home from school on his own, the child having soiled himself or for some other reason, it is appropriate for him as a young male teacher to be in a classroom on his own as a resource teacher with a child on his or her own. Parents and teachers have legitimate concerns about the exact roll out and the exact implementation of this scheme and they need to be listened to. We need to approach this review with no holes barred.

We have a block of money on the table and 500 additional teachers but at the end of the day one consideration needs to be borne in mind, namely, what is best for the children. The resources are not owned by the Department, by politicians or by teachers; they are owned by the children.

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